A Little Fluffy Guide
Angels Come in Many Forms
Dear friend,
Last night I met the English prince Harry and we made a fire together in the hearth of a cottage. It seemed pretty obvious up close that he wasn’t a blood relation of king Charles. Harry turned out to be a pleasant guy, one to one.
It was one of those pleasant vivid dreams.
Coming back into this reality I had a clear memory the shepherd dogs we met in Romania. Chiara and me on a walking holiday in the Carpathian mountains.
She, being used to the Alps and in better shape than me bounded ahead, sure footed as a goat while I puffed and stumbled gradually falling further and further behind. My body adjusting to the weight of the backpack, the heat and the physical exertion.
It surprised me how it only took maybe three or four days for my fitness levels to catch up.
Researching the trip we’d struggled to find a decent guide book for the mountains. The one we found was self published by an English guy who made a big deal about the dangers of shepherd dogs. The dogs are trained to fight off wolves and bears and any medium to large size mammals who might be seen approaching their wards.
In the guide he said he’d once been pinned down and held captive by a pack of them for twenty four hours until the shepherd turned up and called them off, and his advice was to carry fireworks to scare them away.
He told tales of hikers who’s been killed by the dogs and it wasn’t until we got home from our trip that we read the end sections of the guide and found that the writer himself had died in the mountains when he fell off a ledge in the mist.
Some of his walks were a bit on the ambitious side.
I’d never walked the razor ridge of a peak before. It’s exhilarating with a heavy back pack. A bit like if you were on the apex of a stone roof with slate and forest beneath you, above you the baking Romanian sun and the rocks ripping at your skin.
Our first shepherd dog encounter was magical and not at all like the one’s in the guidebook.
We’d come out of a village and were lost at the foot of a forest trail. The guide at this point was next to useless. We didn’t have smart phones back then and anyway there was no signal. Neither could we make sense of our maps and we had maybe a couple of hours left of daylight to find the refuge where we planned to stay the night.
It’s always a good time to pray and this seemed like one of those occasions.
We stood around for a bit, not knowing what to do.
I got this feeling inside like help was on its way and then this little white shepherd dog appeared on the path, ran towards us, said hello and then ran on ahead. They turned and looked back at us and it began to dawn on us both the dog wanted us to follow them.
There wasn’t much else to do. We could ignore the dog and guess which fork to take or follow our little fluffy friend.
Me and Chiara looked at each other and made the decision without discussion. With a shrug of our shoulders we followed the little dog as they took the right hand fork in and led us up into the forest.
Deep down, I knew, I think we both knew, we could trust this dog. That we can trust in life. It’s a feeling, of being connected.
But doubts do come up as the light fades and it crosses your mind you’ve put your trust in an animal you’ve only just met. The weather’s mild. You have some food and a sleeping bag so the worst case is a sleepless night watching out for bears and wolves.
“Oh wait, no that’s kind of serious. What are we doing?” The internal monologue starts up, but you’re committed now, so you reach for your sense of humour keep it on the light side.
It’s dreamlike to be up here, climbing deeper along the narrow path a fluffy white tail leading the way.
After what must have been about forty minutes, with dusk settling in the valley below the dog disappeared around a bend in the path. We could see smoke coming from a shepherds tent far off through the trees on the valley floor, but we’ve lost sight of the dog as we round the bend to be greeted by the lights and cooking smells of our refuge.
The little dog had lead us to safety.
The joy on the dog’s face. How humbling.
We learn from the refuge staff that the dog lives with the shepherd who’s campfire smoke we’d seen. When they’re not working with the shepherd the dog earns a second income of sausages and other treats guiding walkers around the mountain trails. We bought the dog some sausages which were gone in seconds and with a final goodbye so was the dog.
The next day we saw them again along the ridge, leading a group of young hikers back the way we’d come.
It’s a warm feeling in my heart whenever I remember them.
All of them.
Those gorgeous creatures who teach us how to live and to love.
Tomorrow for a change I’ll tell about the second encounter with Romanian shepherd dogs, which was a little more in line with the guidebook’s descriptions.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey